Install Leopard via External DVD Drive?

This is a question for a friend, as I don't have an external DVD drive I can't test it out for myself, but basically can OSX 10.5 Leopard be installed using an external drive?
His internal Superdrive doesn't work properly, very similar to the issues discussed in the "Apple.com > Support > Discussions > iMac G5 > Using DVDs and CDs with your iMac G5" section. I'm not sure of the brand of external drive, but I believe it's connected via USB2.0.
That's pretty much it, any help is, as always, very much appreciated!
Scoobs.

An external DVD drive will work, but it must use FireWire for a G4 or G5. USB or FireWire will work with Intel Macs.

Similar Messages

Installing Leopard via external dvd

is there a way that Ieopard can be installed via an external dvd drive... My Imac 15 inch won't read the install dvd and I read somewhere that it's possible... Is there some truth to this? If so can someone give me instructions
thanks

Yes, you can as long as the external DVD drive is bootable and in a Firewire enclosure because you cannot boot a G4 Mac from a USB device.
Be sure you computer meets the requirements to install Leopard:
System requirements
You must have a Macintosh computer with:
• an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor
• a DVD drive
• built-in FireWire
• at least 512 MB of RAM (additional RAM is recommended for development purposes)
• a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
• at least 9 GB of disk space available, or 12 GB of disk space if you install the developer tools

Installing Tiger from external DVD drive

Hi,
My internal optical drive is damaged. I would like to install Leopard from an external DVD drive. I currently have Tiger on my system. But nothing happens when I double click on the installation icon. Any suggestions ?

Boot while pressing the Option key, then select the DVD.

How do I install an amazon external dvd drive to replace a broken internal one in my old macbook?

My old macbook has a broken optical drive inside it. The one that came with it has quit working and the genius at the genius bar said it needed to be replaced. The genius said to get an external one online so I bought the Amazon basics external dvd drive. I can't figure out how to install it and get it to work.

Nothing will show up on the desktop until you put a CD/DVD in it.
Plug it into the FireWire or USB port and turn it on. Put a CD/DVD in it and it should show up on the desktop.

Installing Tiger with external DVD drive, why won't it work??

I have been trying to install OS X 10.4.3 from the DVD disk, last time I upgrade the OS I had to go out and buy an external DVD drive because I only have a cd drive in my mac. This worked fine last time but now I'm upgrading again it just won't work.
I can not get the mac to boot from the DVD, it sees it's there, I've tried holding down c, the alt key, the option key, choosing the DVD as the start up disk and checking the firmware, nothing will work!
I have read other questions of the same nature but I don't seem to have found an answer.
Can anyone help me, please??
Ruth
imac Power PC G3 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I'm having the same problem. My mom has a Quicksilver G4 – four years old, but plenty to run Tiger. The only thing is we didn't get the built in DVD player. We got an external firewire DVD but can't get the machine to boot from the disk in the external drive.
If I try to run the installer I get a (-2) error that Startup Disk can't make the selected drive the boot drive. If I go into Startup I can select the DVD, but upon actual start up it can't find it and I eventually get the folder with the question mark. Holding down option doesn't bring it up in the list and holding down c does absolutely nothing.
Anybody else?

Upgrading to Leopard from external DVD drive

I have a 1.25 GHz eMac currently running OS X 10.4.11. I'd like to upgrade it to Leopard, but I don't have a working internal drive. Can I do that from an external DVD drive?

Yes you can, but it needs to be connected with FireWire. USB won't work because you will need to boot from the DVD, and eMacs cannot boot from USB devices.
If you have another Mac with a DVD drive handy, you might be able to use it as a FireWire DVD drive by putting in the DVD, and booting it up into FW target mode by holding down T at boot time. Then hook it up to your eMac with FireWire, and see if your eMac can see and boot from the DVD.

Install Windows from external dvd drive?

ok.there is my problem.
I have a Mac Pro here.Last week the dvd driver stopped work and I do not have time to fix it now and I need urgently install the windows xp because need to use a specific app for windows.
Is it possible to install windows xp on bootcamp using a external dvd drive (usb).
thank you.

I have the exact same problem - my internal SuperDrive died and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay over $500 to get a new one. It appears to be utterly impossible to install Windows from an external DVD drive. At least it seems to be that way for me and my machine.
I've tried my drive connected with USB and with Firewire. I've tried rEFIt. I've tried booting with the Option/Alt key. My Mac seems unable (or unwilling) to do this.
I've found many many people with the same problem and only a very small handful that seem to eventually get it to work.
I've even tried to use the 30 day trial of VMFusion (which is not a long term solution because it doesn't use/mimic sufficient video drivers to support the games I want to play) to install Windows to the partition and I can't get that to work either. The Windows installer seems to refuse to install an older version of the system when the boot version has already been updated to a new one.
Does anyone out there have a way to reliably install Windows on a BootCamp partition?
Cheers,
Fusilier

Windows on mac via external dvd drive

can I boot on an USB external dvd drive with an old macbook pro without Boot Camp 5

https://discussions.apple.com/message/22528243#22528243

Installing Leopard on external USB drive

Hi there,
I am trying to wipe a drive clean via an external USB drive box. Might somebody explain how I can do this? When I boot on the Leopard DVD I arrive at the drive choice screen and there is a big red "exclamation point" on the external USB drive mount icon. What can I do to get around this problem?
Cheers,
Noah

Noah Wallach wrote:
Hi there,
I am trying to wipe a drive clean via an external USB drive box. Might somebody explain how I can do this? When I boot on the Leopard DVD I arrive at the drive choice screen and there is a big red "exclamation point" on the external USB drive mount icon. What can I do to get around this problem?
Cheers,
Noah
Although you can boot some systems via USB, the drive must first and foremost be bootable. Not all external drives are bootable. The firmware must support booting. For example, my Maxtor 160 that I use for TM on my G5 states in the manual that it cannot boot.
You are having a somewhat different issue, in that you are not yet ready to boot, but the drive cannot be seen by DU.
I would see if the external drive can first be partitioned and formatted in Leopard directly by running DU in the Leopard Utility folder, not from the DVD.
I would check for a firmware update for your drive box.

Trying to install Tiger via external FW drive.

I've got a PowerMac G4 which no longer has an internal CD/DVD drive as it's been displaced by three other large drives for it's use as a fileserver.
It's currently running 10.3.9 and I am trying to upgrade the Mac to run Tiger via an external firewire 400 DVD drive and a vanilla 10.4 retail install. I can get the computer to boot via the external drive, and can run all of it's utilities. AHT and Disk Util show no anomalies.
When I run the actual install however I get the message:
"There were errors installing. Please try again."
And that appears to be as far as I can get. At first (after ruling out disk errors) I thought it was a disk space issue (eg. temporary files) so I freed some more disk space (it's currently 11.6GB free so I figured this should be enough), except I still get the error.
Will OS X only install via an internal ComboDrive or SuperDrive?

Turns out my problem wasn't the external firewire drive I was attempting to upgrade with, it was the target disk which had some problems the installer didn't like. With a different drive (which MUST be formatted first!), I was able to install a new copy of OS X and import the majority of settings from the old drive.

How to install Leopard without working DVD-drive?

I have a MacBook Pro 3,1 (A1226) without a working DVD-drive and I would like to replace the existing 80Gb drive with a 320Gb drive. The hardware is no problem, I did that a few times already, but how to get the OS working?
I have an TimeMachine backup on a USB-disk of the 10.5.8 (9L31a) installed system. I do not wish to upgrade because there is some old licensed software on it that does not work with a newer OS.
I also have another MacBook Pro (with 10.7.5) I could hook up with an Ethernet-cable. Theoretically even with a Firewire cable I do not have right now. But when I buy extra things I should perhaps better get an external hard disk enclosure for the 320Gb?
Please advice.

Am gonna solve it in another way. I will just get a so-called "9.5 mm PATA Optical Bay SATA Hard Drive Enclosure" and put the 320Gb drive in that one. Sorry to have distracted you.

How to install Leopard to external hard drive & boot the eMac from it.

I am attempting to update my mom's eMac so she can use her new iPad and have discovered it would be best to install Leopard onto an external firewire hard drive and boot from that. I want to be sure I'm doing it right. So, I attach the drive to the eMac, partition and format it (I did find some instructions in the forum) and then how do I load Leopard on the external drive. Would it be best to do all the formatting and installation from my own MacBook Pro? After Leopard is on the external drive, how do I cause the eMac to boot from it?
Or would it be easier to return the iPad, buy the basic Macbook and shine the eMac? Can you tell I'm frustrated?
Message was edited by: cwebb

how do I load Leopard on the external drive
Install it normally. The drive must be connected with FireWire.
Would it be best to do all the formatting and installation from my own MacBook Pro?
No. It won't work if you do.
how do I cause the eMac to boot from it?
Start up with the Option key held down, click on it, and push the button with the straight arrow.
(51916)

How to install Leopard on external Hard-drive

hi can somebody tell-me how to install Mac OS X 10.5 on to my external Hard drive????

Well, an USB HD is useless with a PPC computer because you can't boot with it. So, installing OS X onto it is an exercise in futility. Return it for one that has FW or get another one. Amazon is offering an ext enclosure + 1 TB Seagate for $130 USD at http://www.amazon.com/Macally-G-S350SUA-Hi-Speed-FireWire-Enclosure/dp/B000P1NAM O/ref=pdbbs_sr1?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1240278380&sr=8-1

Can I initialize my hard drive and install from an external DVD drive?

My PowerBook's showing signs of problems and I think it needs to be reinitialized. The only sticking point is that its Super Drive is jammed and I can't get an audio CD out that's been stuck in there for an embarassingly long time. Last year I was able to update OS X from Panther to Tiger with my external firewire DVD-RW. It booted from the external drive without any problems and the update went smoothly. Now, though, I want to boot from the external drive so that I can erase and rebuild my hard drive. Does anyone foresee any problems doing that?
PowerBook G4 1.33 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

should be no problem - external drive can be either selected as startup drive form System Preferences or by holding down "option" key on restart.
after machine is booted from the external drive, formatting/installing supposed to work.
if there is power on built-in optical drive, sometimes it's possible to get stuck disc out by poking at it with some thin stiff piece of paper like business card etc.

Boot Camp will not let me install Windows via external hard drive

Hi,
I'm having problems installing Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro. I have the iso file on my external hard dirve and have went to Boot Camp but the following message comes up:
"The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.
The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows."
At one point i just clicked OK and let Boot Camp install the selected tasks, which formated the disk, copied the Windows files and downloaded the Windows support software but another message came up:
"Install this Windows support software after installing Windows"
It then only gives me an option to Quit...
I would like to add that i tried to install Windows a few days ago and everything was working well up until instead of clicking on "customize" to continue the installation i clicked on "upgrade" then it asked me to remove disk and reboot the computer, i did that and it didn't work. Luckily i got that sorted but wanted to try and install Windows again as it didn't end up getting it installed and this is what is happening now...
Can someone suggest to me what might be wrong?
Thanks in advance.

My other post has been deleted. I will reply to you on this post instead.
I dragged down the Macintosh HD partition via the small triangle at the bottom right hand side of it. It now looks like this:
Is it back to normal now? Can i install Windows now or do i need to do anything else?
Thanks a lot for your help!

Install Leopard via External DVD Drive?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for